


Every Broken Thing Made Whole

by Syrena_of_the_lake



Category: Star Wars: Aftermath - Chuck Wendig
Genre: Gen, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Perfect Weapon (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 09:22:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13051134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Syrena_of_the_lake/pseuds/Syrena_of_the_lake
Summary: After the Battle of Endor, a particular artifact is dangerously lost -- and the race to find it pits Sinjir against his own past. Good thing Jas is along to keep a level head. Sinjir isn't quite sure why Bones is along, but level-headedness probably has very little to do with it. Unless one meant physically leveling an enemy's head, which might come in handy with the Empire snooping around.





	Every Broken Thing Made Whole

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bluspirits](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluspirits/gifts).



> For Bluspirit92, who wanted Sinjir and angst. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> This story takes place sometime after Aftermath #1, and connects the dots leading to "The Perfect Weapon" by Delilah S. Dawson.

**8 days after the Battle of Endor**

Ferns rustled. TK-1472 jerked his blaster rifle around to point at... nothing. His harsh breaths echoed loudly in his helmet.

Eight days since the Death Star had exploded overhead. Shrapnel still rained down, trailing fire in the sky. He had survived in this barbaric jungle ever since, drinking rainwater and eating grubs, no better than the primitive creatures that hunted him.

He knew how to hide from Rebels. But those furry little savage natives could _smell_ him.

He'd long since ditched much of his armor, but stubbornly kept the helmet. Hoping against hope that he would hear a transmission from fellow stormtroopers. A call to arms. A broadcast from an officer, or a group of holdouts. They could band up, fight their way out, steal a transport... or make their way to a drier, less populated portion of the planet, set up a resistance movement...

 _You're dreaming, Jor._ TK-1472 grunted. His comm, always open now, squealed feedback in protest. _Empire's over. Nothing left but scrap metal._

Something screeched from the trees, and the stormtrooper tightened his grip on the blaster rifle. His charge was running low, but there were still weapons and corpses littering the forest floor. He could always re-arm. It was just a matter of looking down while sharpening the other senses, remaining on alert for movement in the underbrush.

TK-1472 trod lightly, but his heels still sank into the loamy soil, which was soft with rotting vegetation. It muffled his footsteps and unbalanced his stride. He hated it. Give him duracrete — solid and unyielding, like the endless cityscape of Coruscant or the sand-scoured spaceports of his home planet.

" _Jor_."

TK-1472 stiffened. He gripped his rifle so tightly his fingers creaked. No one out here could possibly know his given name — the only men who could recognize him by his walk were lying dead, felled by giant trees or blasterfire.

" _Jor Tribulus_."

It was a whisper through the trees. Rifle cocked, TK-1472 followed the voice. Sweat trickled down his neck. Every sense strained at the sudden silence. Where were the birds? Where was the wind?

" _JOR_."

The ground shivered underfoot with the force of the command. The trees groaned.

TK-1472 let his rifle fall to the ground. He saw the dead leaves stir, but never heard the rustling.

Ahead, the trees thinned. A charred clearing opened. TK-1472 took off his helmet and watched it roll across the flat ground and rest at the base of a platform. No, not a platform. A pyre.

Jor Tribulus, formerly Trooper TK-1472 of the 81st Platoon, stepped forward. And found his destiny.

  
**6 months after the Battle of Endor**

"Well, that escalated quickly." Sinjir gingerly toed the armor-clad body sprawled at his feet.

"I HAVE PERFORMED EGREGIOUS VIOLENCE." Temmin's maniacal droid kicked the corpse in gross imitation of Sinjir's movements.

The ex-Imperial grimaced and took a step back. "Roger that."

"ROGER ROGER."

Jas climbed down from the AT-ST she'd commandeered with a sigh of disgust. "I can't take you anywhere nice," she complained.

"VIOLENCE IS NICE."

"Endor is not nice," Sinjir countered with a baleful look. "I've been here before, remember? Had my fill then. Speaking of fill, I don't suppose you have a nip of something tucked away...?"

"A NIP IS A BITE. MASTER TEMMIN'S MOM SAID 'NO MORE BITING, EXCEPT IN BATTLE.'"

Jas smirked. Sinjir scowled. The stalemate dragged on until the scout trooper's body twitched, although it could have been Bones kicking him again.

"Remind me why you brought me back here, of all places?" Sinjir asked plaintively. "I had enough self-introspection among these blasted trees to last me a lifetime, thank you very much."

"The Empire is here — again," Jas explained with mock patience. "We need to find out why. Recon. Stealth. You know, like Solo said: ' _r_ _eal quiet-like_.'"  
Mister Bones hummed several octaves off-key. Far overhead, a flock of birds screeched in protest.

"Then why'd we bring him?" Sinjir jerked his thumb at the droid.

Jas bent to check the fallen trooper for weapons and identification. "Because he performs egregious violence."

"So do you," Sinjir pointed out. "Only you do it _real quiet-like_. Bones isn't good at silence."

"I AM GOOD AT VIOLENCE," announced Bones. "SILENCE RHYMES WITH VIOLENCE."

"See?" Jas shrugged. "Close enough for government work. Which is what we do now, apparently."

"Oh yes, very official. ex-Imperial loyalty officer gone rogue, a bounty hunter gone... I guess un-rogue... and a happy-go-lucky dancing murder droid. Hear that?" Sinjir cupped a hand to his ear. "That's the sound of the dark forces of the galaxy quaking in their collective boots."

Bones cocked his birdlike head. "I DO NOT HEAR ANYTHING. MY AUDITORY SENSORS ARE OPERATING AT 99.8% EFFICIENCY. YOURS ARE MALFUNCTIONING," he concluded.

"Sinjir's always malfunctioning," said Jas.

"ROGER ROGER."

Sinjir scowled, but his heart wasn't in it. In this verdant place, teeming with an overabundance of growing, unfurling, flying, creeping, crawling things, all he could see and smell was death.

He missed Jas's look of concern. But as he absently scanned the trees for movement, Sinjir did spot the clearing.

  
**6 weeks after the Battle of Endor**

"I couldn't put it on," the man wept. "It was so twisted. But I tried!" He jerked forward in his chair, not seeming to notice the restraints. "I tried so hard to put it on!"

Dr. Orato Nemeth noted the patient's broken nose, now healed but forever crooked, and the scars where to all appearances he had tried to cut his own ears off. "I can see that," Dr. Nemeth said dryly. "Note to all staff," he muttered into his vocoder. "No sharp implements of any kind."

The former stormtrooper rocked in his restraints, groaning with anguish. "It was my destiny," he pled to the air. "It called me!"

Shaking his head, Dr. Nemeth made a note in his files.

_Patient exhibits severe mental and emotional strain. Violent tendencies, egomania, paranoia and delusions. Danger to self and others._

"We're going to help you, Jor," the doctor said. "There's a retirement facility on Vashka for people just like you."

The patient's eyes shifted. "Serial number TK-1472," he barked. He met the doctor's gaze. "Rebel scum," he hissed and lunged against his restraints.

Dr. Nemeth jumped. "Nurse!" he called. In the space of one shaky breath, a Gamorrean female and a burly human man were transferring the patient to the biobed. He tried to bite the Gamorrean, but couldn't even break her skin.

"We've got him, doc," said the other nurse cheerfully. "Me 'n Trogg will take him back to his quarters—"

"No!" Dr. Nemeth's outburst caught even him by surprise. "Send him straight to Vashka. He's beyond anything I can do for him."

"Yes, doctor," said the human nurse. The Gamorrean grunted. "I'll send Trogg for his personal effects as soon as we've got him sedated."

"Yes, yes, do that." Dr. Nemeth waved a hand and turned his attention back to his files. He tried to ignore the beads of sweat dripping down his temples. Strictly speaking, protocol demanded he go through the patient's effects before transfer. But Nemeth wanted nothing more to do with the man who used to be Jor Tribulus.

He pressed his fingerprint authorization on the datapad.

_TRANSFER AUTHORIZED._

There. Whatever happened next was out of his hands.

 

**6 months after the Battle of Endor**

Without conscious thought, Sinjir found himself moving forward.

"Hold up!" Jas yanked Sinjir back by his collar. "That clearing could be crawling with Imperials, idiot. Bones, check it out — quietly."

The droid's serrated beak opened and immediately clacked shut. He nodded, re-articulated his joints, and scuttled out into the clearing.

"He's like something out of a boogey-boogey story to scare younglings," commented Sinjir. "Makes you wonder about Temmin, doesn't it?"

Jas motioned for him to hush. In the shadows from the giant trees, her midnight-blur skin and whorled tattoos almost blended with the gloom and the underbrush.

 _Now_ she _really_ is  _something out of a boogey-boogey story_ , Sinjir thought fondly.

The ferns next to him rustled, and Sinjir found himself staring into the frightened eyes of an Ewok cub.

"Shoo," he whispered, flapping his hands at the creature. "If this place is what I think it is, it's no place for you, you ugly little furball. Shoo!"

"THERE WAS A JEDI HERE, MASTER TEMMIN'S FRIENDS," Bones announced into the silence. The Ewok squeaked and fled.

"Good riddance," muttered Sinjir. "Wait, Jedi? How do you know?"

Bones shrugged with a clatter of his accoutrements. "MY PROGRAMMING TELLS ME SO."

Jas touched Sinjir's shoulder. "Look," she said softly. "He's not wrong."

In the middle of the clearing was a pile of ash, a heap of cinders shaped like a body, with bits of metal and unburned bone poking through. A cybernetic hand reached grotesquely out from the debris.

"This is what Leia sent us to find," said Jas, "before the Empire could."

"Why the kriffing hell wouldn't Skywalker have finished the job?" Sinjir's outburst startled a spotted herbivore grazing near the clearing's edge. It bolted and then veered sharply around the remains of the pyre.

Jas shivered. "Leia said they left in a hurry. Maybe he never came back to check."

"That is mind-bogglingly stupid," Sinjir declared. "When you start a fire in a forest, even one as wet as this, you don't just leave before it's out! Even I know that, and I'm a city boy."

"He's a sand-farmer," Jas pointed out. "I doubt there are any trees on Tatooine, and there sure isn't enough moisture on that rock to dampen a fire. He might not know. Or maybe..." The bounty hunter swallowed and fell silent.

"If you're going to say something unbearably creepy that will keep me from sleeping for the next millennium, don't."

"Maybe the body reconstituted itself," Jas whispered.

"She never listens to me," Sinjir complained to Bones.

"I LISTEN TO MASTER TEMMIN."

"Good boy." Sinjir rubbed his arms. It felt like something was crawling all over him, but even the insects seemed to steer clear of this spot. Which should probably tell him something.

"I thought Vader 'turned back to the Light', or some such nonsense." Sinjir made quotes with his hands and tried to ignore the fact that Bones was still mimicking his movements.

"Maybe he did," Jas said soberly, "and maybe his spirit moved on. But that doesn't undo the things he did. And Dark things leave dark traces." She made a gesture with her hand that Sinjir assumed was a ritualistic warding against evil. He wondered doubted it would work against a Sith Lord.

Staring at the — skeleton? biosuit? — the remains of whoever or whatever Vader had been, Sinjir expected to feel... something. Fear, anger, hatred, revulsion — any of the things he felt on a daily basis when he looked in the mirror. Instead, he felt tired. A bone-aching weariness that made the very blood in his veins sluggish, his thoughts torpid.

Was it some Force-echo left by Vader's presence?

Probably not, Sinjir acknowledged to himself, feeling the exhaustion shift and settle over his mind and body like a shroud. It was mostly the way he felt whenever some remnant of his Imperial past showed up to haunt him. It just normally wasn't so literal as a corpse.

"The head is missing," he felt obliged to point out after a long moment. His voice came out rough, as if he'd been drinking some afterburner-brewed rotgut. Which, of course, he hadn't, more's the pity. "Or helmet, plus whatever was under it. Guess someone beat us here."

"The Acolytes," Jas spat. "Ghouls with delusions of grandeur."

Sinjir shook his head slowly, turning the memories over in his mind like bottles subject to minute inspection. He had an excellent memory. Some people, he'd read, built mental palaces to keep track of events, names, faces. His memory was the galaxy's largest bar, each day tightly bottled until he needed it again. He'd hoped to drink one particular day into oblivion. But it was still there, rolling around in the dust and mental detritus, always underfoot and threatening to throw him off-balance.

"There were stormtroopers 'hiding' in the brush," he said. "Note the air quotes — you were looking, weren't you, Emari? 'Hiding,' I said. It was laughable. You could spot even the scouts a mile away — all that white against green and brown. I watched those fuzzy, friendly little Ewoks our friends talk about dismember a man. Clumsily but effectively."

Jas watched him silently. Sinjir focused on Vader's metal hand, curled into a loose fist in the ash. He was sure there was something ironic about that, if only he could think.

But the smell of the giant luff-ferns and the loamy earth were distracting. The only thing missing was the charred scent of blasterburns. And the screams, of course, but they had never been very far away.

All those bottled memories, ready to be uncorked.

"Some troopers got smart, threw away the armor. The Ewoks were using helmets like drums, you know. There probably weren't heads in there — but I digress. Troopers were hiding in the brush, in their bodysuits. Or their skivvies, after rolling around in the mud so the Ewoks wouldn't smell them out. The forest was full of desperate people." _Just like me_ , he didn't add aloud. "Imperials and Rebels too cowardly to fight, too scared to flee. Any one of them could have taken the helmet."

"And now the Empire is back, searching for Dark artifacts." Jas's voice twisted with revulsion. "I've seen the graffiti — 'Vader lives.' Fools."

"VADER DOES NOT LIVE," corrected Bones. "THAT IS HIS BODY AND IT IS DEAD. THAT MEANS I CANNOT KILL IT AGAIN."

Sinjir winced. He'd tried killing the past over and over again. It worked, sort of. He certainly wasn't the same man he'd been before Endor, before Jas and Norra and the others. Before Conder, but he wasn't going to think about that. But Jas was more right than she knew. You could kill something a thousand times over and still wear its face.

 _I'm a bad person_ , he thought again. _I do bad things. Now I do them for a good reason. What does that make me?_

The wind swirled a few dead leaves in and out of the pyre.

 _I'm not unlike him_. Sinjir swallowed. How late did redemption have to be before it stopped counting?

He felt dizzy and looked up at the sky. It was still blue, still hazy with moisture, and still criss-crossed with the trails of Imperial atmospheric craft looking for the very spot where Sinjir and Jas were standing. Why they hadn't found it yet, especially given the trail of corpses they'd left in their wake, he had no idea.

Sinjir didn't think that sounded much like the workings of the Force, but what did he know?

Bones was chasing dragonflies and slicing patterns into the ferns with his vibroknives. Damn if Sinjir wouldn't rather join the droid than confront the task awaiting them.

Jas must have been thinking along the same lines. "How are we going to dispose of the rest of it?" she asked.

"You mean his body?" Sinjir wasn't sure when he started thinking of Vader as a person instead of a monster. Probably the same moment that he realized he wasn't totally unlike Vader. A life of evil followed by a change of heart — he could empathize.

And Sinjir was sure that didn't say anything good about _him_.

"We can't very well leave it for the Acolytes to cannibalize or worship or whatever it is they do with Sith relics." The bounty hunter's lip curled in disgust. "We should just slag it."

Something in Sinjir's chest rebelled. It felt like a fluttering bird, fragile and panicking. "Let's take it," he blurted.

"What?" Jas stared at him as if he'd sprouted horns of his own. "And do what with it? Bring it back to Chandrila and put it in a museum? Give it to Leia as a baby gift?"

Sinjir winced. "No, I... that was stupid, wasn't it?"

Jas nodded, still wide-eyed. "I've heard better sense out of mynocks. You sucking on power cables now?"

Sinjir rubbed grubby hands over his face. They smelled like ash. He looked up abruptly, noted the flash of worry on Jas' face, and waved it off. "I'm not losing it," he promised. "I just meant... well, why can't we launch him — it — into the sun?"

Now that would be a funeral pyre worthy of... well, of whoever Vader was to Skywalker. Aside from murderer and hand-chopper, that is. There had to be something. The galaxy's only living Jedi wouldn't give his deadliest foe an honorable send-off without good reason, would he?

Admittedly, Sinjir had never known any Jedi. They'd all been dead. Or hiding on backwater dust farms, apparently.

"Why?" asked Jas.

To finish what Skywalker started. "No body, no memorial." Sinjir forced an expression of cheer. "And no Acolytes digging for relics, or making jewelry out of the slag. Can you imagine?" He forced a falsetto. "'My earrings? Oh, these old things? They're forged from the vaporized flesh of evil incarnate and burnished with the blood of innocents. One-of-a-kind.'"

Jas snorted and turned away. "Fine. Don't talk to me. Just get busy. Bones! We need you."

The droid abandoned his prey — or maybe artwork, it was hard to tell — and galumphed over to the charred circle in the ground. "CAN I EVISCERATE SOMETHING?"

"No, but you can excavate... this."

Bones cocked his head in consideration. His photoreceptors brightened. "EXCAVATION IS LIKE EVISCERATING THE GROUND."

"If you say so. Just get started." Jas looked over at Sinjir, but he was squinting up at the empty sky.

 

**9 weeks after the Battle of Endor**

Jor Tribulus writhed in agony. He bloodied his fingers trying to open the lid, he bribed the guards, but no one would help him unleash his destiny.

Inside the locked metal case, a melted and misshapen artifact waited. Steeped in the Dark Side of the Force over decades, the helmet and bits of fused bone slowly twisted the man in the bunk above the box. But even now, the artifact was not without conflict, for above all it belonged to its former master.

It could take an age to find for someone so filled with hate and anger, yet with a streak of Light threading through the Dark. An age to find a new master, to be made whole again. Or perhaps not so long.

The waiting had already begun.

 

**6 months after the Battle of Endor**

Jas and Sinjir watched silently as the capsule launched towards Endor's sun.  
Against all odds, no other scout troopers appeared to harrass, pursue, shoot at or otherwise kill them.

Bones was sulking as a result. Sinjir was enjoying the silence. Jas looked like a bounty hunter with something on her mind. Well, Sinjir didn't want to hear it.  
If he wanted to give the man who used to be Darth Vader some semblance of a respectful sendoff in the selfish hopes that someone might do the same for him someday, that was his own business.

"Norra would say something about symbolism and hope for the galaxy," Jas offered.

"Lovely. Incinerate one bad man, make the galaxy a better place, yadda yadda," Sinjir responded a second too late, his voice too dull to come off as properly sarcastic.

Jas shifted uncomfortably. "You're not like him, you know."

"I think I am, actually." Sinjir couldn't even meet his own eyes reflected in the viewport. "I hunted people down and caused them pain. Sometimes I didn't care; sometimes I enjoyed it. Sometimes I make myself sick."

Jas growled in frustration. "You're a better man than that and you know it. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Think of it this way: if even Vader can be redeemed, you can't have all that far to go."

"You're a real ray of sunshine, Emari."

Millions of kilometers away, the capsule and tomb of the man who became and ceased to be Darth Vader glowed with heat. It elongated into a dark streak across the blazing sun, and then abruptly flared until brightness was indistinguishable from brightness.

Jas put an uncommonly gentle hand on his shoulder. "Job's done. Let's go home."

Almost against his will, Sinjir felt his spirits lift. _Home_. Had he ever really had one before? Not since childhood, certainly. Yet this home wasn't a physical abode so much as a collection of people who looked at him and saw something more than he really was.

Maybe they saw what he _could_ be.

"THE JOB IS NOT DONE," Bones contradicted from his sullen crouch in the corner of the ship. "YOU FORGOT THE HEAD."

"We didn't forget," Sinjir protested automatically. "We're... delegating. Darth Vader's helmet wasn't on the forest moon of Endor. It's somebody else's problem now."

Jas raised an eyebrow. "It had better be. This little joyride has cost me enough fuel. I'm not traipsing around half the galaxy without a payday. There are _live_ criminals out there we have to catch. Still..." her expression turned pensive. "What do you think the Empire wanted with it?"

Sinjir shook his head solemnly. "I don't know. But I hope we never find out."

Bones rose smoothly to his feet, servomotors whirring in the silence. "MASTER TEMMIN SAYS WE ARE CUTTING THE HEAD OFF THE SNAKE. THE HEAD OF VADER IS CUT OFF, SO HE IS DEAD. MISSION COMPLETE."

"You said it, buddy." Sinjir clapped the droid on the shoulder, snatched it back and quickly counted his fingers. "Now let's go home."

"HOME IS GOOD. MASTER TEMMIN IS THERE. I WILL GIVE HIM A HUG."

Jas rolled her eyes and turned away. "That's enough sentiment for me."

Sinjir looked at the droid's clawed digits in mild alarm. "Better make it a very careful hug," he warned.

"I WILL BE GENTLE. A HUG IS LIKE VIOLENCE—"

"Made out of love, you've said that before." Sinjir shook his head. "You don't have much practice with that, do you?"

"I WILL PRACTICE WITH YOU. YOU LOOK LIKE YOU NEED VIOLENCE MADE OUT OF LOVE."

Sinjir yelped and raced towards the cockpit, the droid hot on his heels. "No! Bones, stop! Jas, tell him I don't need a hug!"

The bounty hunter's laughter and Sinjir's shrieks melded and echoed throughout the ship. Then they jumped to hyperspace, Endor's star still burning behind them, its brightness undiminished.

  
**25 years after the Battle of Endor**

The boy once known as Ben Solo had become a man with a destiny. As he stood before the simple shrine, he contemplated the threads of fate that had been pulled to bring him to this moment. His grandfather's blood coursed in his veins, his grandfather's skull (or, admittedly, what remained of it) rested in his care, and his grandfather's legacy would be his future.

Vader did not live.

But Kylo Ren would.


End file.
